14 September, 2015

A plan B against the European Financial Dictatorship

The
five European politicians published their Plan B about Europe today
[12/9]. The document is in reality a manifesto for the creation of a
political movement on a pan-European level and a call for an
international summit at the beginning of November.

Jean-Luc
Mélenchon, Member of the European Parliament, co-founder of the
Parti de Gauche (France)

Stefano
Fassina, Member of the Italian Parliament, former Italian deputy
minister of economy and finance (Italy)

Zoe
Konstantopoulou, President of the Hellenic parliament (Greece)

Oskar
Lafontaine, former German minister of finance, founder of Die Linke
(Germany)

Yanis
Varoufakis, Member of the Greek Parliament, former Greek minister of
finance (Greece)

On
13th July, the democratic elected Greek government of Alexis Tsipras
was brought to its knees by the European Union. The “agreement”
of 13th of July is in fact a coup d’état. It was obtained by
having the European Central Bank close down the Greek banks and
threaten never to allow them to open up again, until the Greek
government accepted a new version of a failed program. Why? Because
official Europe could not stand the idea that a people suffering from
its self-defeating austerity program dared elect a government
determined to say “No!”.

Now,
with more austerity, more fire sales of public assets, greater
irrationality than ever in the sphere of economic policy, and massive
fresh misanthropy in the realm social policy, the new Memorandum of
Understanding only serves to worsen Greece’s Great Depression and
to loot Greece’s wealth by vested interests, non-Greek and Greek
alike.

We
must learn from this financial coup. The euro has become the tool of
economic and governmental dominance in Europe by a European oligarchy
hiding behind the German government, delighted to see Mrs Merkel
doing all the "dirty work" other governments are incapable
of undertaking. This Europe only generates violence within nations
and between them: mass unemployment, fierce social dumping and
insults against the European Periphery that are attributed to
Germany’s leadership while parroted by all the “elites”, the
Periphery’s not excluded. The European Union has thus become an
agent of an extreme right wing ethos and a vehicle for annulling
democratic control over production and distribution throughout
Europe.

It
is a dangerous lie to assert that the euro and the EU serve Europeans
and shield them from crisis. It is an illusion to believe that
Europe’s interests can be protected within the iron cage of the
Eurozone’s governance “rules” and within the current Treaties.
President Hollande's and Prime Minister Renzi's method of behaving
like a “model student”, or in fact a “model prisoner”, is a
form of surrender that will not even result in clemency. The
President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said it
clearly: "there can be no democratic choice against the European
treaties". This is the neoliberal adaptation of the "limited
sovereignty" doctrine invented by the Soviet leader Brezhnev in
1968. Then, the Soviets crushed the Prague Spring with their tanks.
This summer, the EU crushed the Athens Spring with its banks.

We
are determined to break with this “Europe”. It is the basic
condition needed to rebuild cooperation between our peoples and our
countries on a new basis. How can we enact policies of redistribution
of wealth and of creation of decent jobs, especially for the young,
ecological transition and the rebuilding of democracy within the
constraints of this EU? We have to escape the inanity and inhumanity
of the current European Treaties and remould them in order to shed
the straightjacket of neoliberalism, to repeal the Fiscal Compact,
and to oppose the TTIP.

We
live in extraordinary times. We are facing an emergency.
Member-states need to have policy space that allows their democracies
to breathe and to put forward sensible policies at the member-state’s
level, free of fear of a clamp down from an authoritarian Eurogroup
dominated by the interests of the strongest among them and of big
business, or from an ECB that is used as a steamroller that threatens
to flatten an “uncooperative country”, as it happened with Cyprus
or Greece.

This
is our plan A: We shall work in each of our countries, and all
together throughout Europe, towards a complete renegotiation of the
European Treaties. We commit to engage with the struggle of Europeans
everywhere in a campaign of Civil European disobedience toward
arbitrary European practices and irrational “rules” until that
renegotiation is achieved.

Our
first task is to end the unaccountability of the Eurogroup. The
second task is to end the pretence that the ECB is “apolitical”
and “independent”, when it is highly political (of the most toxic
form), fully dependent on bankrupt bankers and their political
agents, and ready to end democracy at the touch of a button.

The
majority of governments representing Europe’s oligarchy, and hiding
behind Berlin and Frankfurt, also have a plan A: Not to yield to the
European people’s demand for democracy and to use brutality to end
their resistance. We've seen this in Greece last July. Why did they
manage to strangle Greece’s democratically elected government?
Because they also had a plan B: To eject Greece from the Eurozone in
the worst conditions possible by destroying its banking system and
putting to death its economy.

Facing
this blackmail, we also need a plan B of our own to deter the plan B
of Europe’s most reactionary and anti-democratic forces. To
reinforce our position in the face of their brutal commitment to
policies that sacrifice the majority to the interests of a tiny
minority. But also to re-assert the simple principle that Europe is
about Europeans and that currencies are tools for promoting shared
prosperity, not instruments of torture or weapons by which to murder
democracy. If the euro cannot be democratised, if they insist on
using it to strangle the people, we will rise up, look at them in the
eye, and tell them: Do your worst! Your threats don’t scare us. We
shall find a way of ensuring that Europeans have a monetary system
that works with them, not at their expense.

Our
Plan A for a democratic Europe, backed with a Plan B which shows the
powers-that-be that they cannot terrorise us into submission, is
inclusive and aims at appealing to the majority of Europeans. This
demands a high level of preparation. Debate will strengthen its
technical elements. Many ideas are already on the table: the
introduction of parallel payment systems, parallel currencies,
digitization of euro transactions, community based exchange systems,
the euro exit and transformation of the euro into a common currency.

No
European nation can work towards its liberation in isolation. Our
vision is internationalist. In anticipation of what may happen in
Spain, Ireland – and potentially again in Greece, depending on how
the political situation evolves – and in France in 2017, we need to
work together concretely towards a plan B, taking into account the
different characteristics of each country.

We
therefore propose the convening of an international summit on a plan
B for Europe, open to willing citizens, organisations and
intellectuals. This conference could take place as early as November
2015. We shall begin the process on Saturday the 12th of September
during the Fête de l'Humanité in Paris. Do join us!